Requiem for a Pink Moon: An Elizabethan Tribute to Nick Drake

Requiem for a Pink Moon: An Elizabethan Tribute to Nick Drake - Harmonia Mundi - H

Label: Harmonia Mundi
Catalog No: HAR 902111
Format: CD
Release Date: 2012-05-08
Number of Discs: 1
Running time: 1 hr. 6 min.
Mono/Stereo: Stereo
UPC Code: 3149020211120

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Notes & Reviews:

Following the success of his 2011 album Rose of Sharon - a celebration of 18th Century American music that landed on Billboard's classical chart and critics' year-end lists - the latest project by Joel Frederiksen and the Ensemble Phoenix Munich takes them all the way back in time to... 1972. That was the year the late British troubadour and cult favorite Nick Drake released his third and final album, Pink Moon. Initially, the album garnered a small amount of critical attention, but it was not until decades after Drake's death that it received widespread public and critical acclaim. Today, the sparse and unadorned tracks of Pink Moon are regarded by many fans and music critics as the greatest efforts of a tragically short career. Drake's was an art filled with melancholy, a feeling and a concept that unites him with the singersongwriters of the Elizabethan age. Adapting Drake's melodic guitar lines for Renaissance instruments, Frederiksen sheds new light on these finely crafted songs that speak directly and powerfully to the human condition and offers a fitting tribute to a modern-day Thomas Campion.

BBC Music Magazine
Frederiksen's Tudor take intersperses Drake with Dowland and others. Probably too stiff for Drake fans, but it's all nicely done.

The Arts Desk
Several of these songs take on a warmth, clarity and openness which is missing from Drake's originals...And what could have been a maudlin wallow emerges as transcendent, affectionate and uplifting. Frederiksen sneaks in his own song, Ocean, after Time has told me. A sweet tribute, and you find yourself wondering how it would sound in Drake's own voice.

The Independent
The sequence shifting from Drake's "Rider on the Wheel" through Dowland's "Time Stands Still" to Drake's "Time Has Told Me" works both thematically and musically, despite the difference of Frederiksen and Timothy Leigh Evans's courtly vocal manner from Drake's original air of resignation.

Notes & Reviews:

Recording information: Alter Reitstadel, Neumarkt (Oberpfalz) (03/2011).

Ever since critics began to place "She's Leaving Home" and some of the other more elaborate Beatles songs within the classical tradition of British music, performers have sought ways of exploring connections between contemporary and classical song. The idea seems plausible, yet the execution is devilishly difficult, for simple juxtaposition of rock and Renaissance songs emphasizes their differences, not their similarities. One way around the problem is the insertion of some third element, such as the spy plotline Sting added to his recording of songs by John Dowland. This recording by American-German bass Joel Frederiksen (he actually has a slight German accent here, but not a distracting one) takes a related tack: recording songs by British folk-rocker Nick Drake and putting them together with works by Dowland, Michael Cavendish, and Thomas Campion, he adds arrangements of Requiem chants that, although there are just a few, knit the program together in general mood. The arrangements also help: instead of simply turning Drake into a Renaissance lute song composer, Frederiksen crafts arrangements for viola da gamba, lute, and drum that preserve their original rhythms (although Drake himself often dispensed with the drums). Drake's songs work better for this kind of enterprise than most others of his time (he died a probable suicide in 1974): their prevailing melancholia is of a piece with Dowland's, and the harmonic-modal system of Drake's music, little touched by blues, is close enough to the Renaissance lute song that you can, when you add in Frederiksen's lovely singing and artful arrangements for Ensemble Phoenix Munich, just about forget which composer you're listening to. The engineering from Harmonia Mundi is more than just clear; it helps smooth over the lines that Frederiksen is trying to erase. This offbeat album is one of the most successful experiments of its type. ~ James Manheim



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Works Details

>Drake, Nick : Road
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 12 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Frederiksen, Joel : Requiem aeternam
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 3 min. 54 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Drake, Nick : Pink Moon
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 43 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Drake, Nick : Horn
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 44 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Dowland, John : Firste Booke of Songes
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 55 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance
  • Written: 1597

>Drake, Nick : Place to be
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 48 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Dowland, John : Firste Booke of Songes
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 55 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance
  • Written: 1597

>Cavendish, Michael : Wandring in This Place for lute (or 5 voices)
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 3 min. 26 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance

>Drake, Nick : Which Will
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 3 min. 4 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Dowland, John : Firste Booke of Songes
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 44 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance
  • Written: 1597

>Drake, Nick : Rider on the Wheel
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 37 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Dowland, John : Third and Last Booke of Songes
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 4 min. 43 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance
  • Form: Vocal
  • Written: 1603

>Drake, Nick : Time Has Told Me
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 4 min. 12 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Frederiksen, Joel : Ocean, song
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 3 min. 14 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary
  • Form: Vocal

>Drake, Nick : Hanging on a Star
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 2 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Campion, Thomas : Never weather-beaten saile more willing bent to shore
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 4 min. 6 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance
  • Form: Vocal
  • Written: 1613

>Drake, Nick : Horn
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 44 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Frederiksen, Joel : Requiem in F major (after "Horn" by Nick Drake)
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 26 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary
  • Form: Choral

>Drake, Nick : Voice from the Mountain
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 3 min. 21 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Drake, Nick : Northern Sky
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 2 min. 55 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Drake, Nick : Harvest Breed
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 35 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Dowland, John : Firste Booke of Songes
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Lute); Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 4 min. 12 sec.
  • Period Time: Renaissance
  • Written: by 1597

>Drake, Nick : From the Morning
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 3 min. 28 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary

>Frederiksen, Joel : Requiem no 2
  • Performers: Joel Frederiksen (Bass); Joel Frederiksen (Lute)
  • Ensemble: Ensemble Phoenix Munich
  • Running Time: 1 min. 23 sec.
  • Period Time: Contemporary
  • Form: Choral